Cherry Stems
by tore-my-yellow-dress
Summary: "Everyone deserves to have a life." She is not everyone. Tag to 2x08.


She stumbles through the door and errantly hangs her coat on the predetermined hook, going through the motions, mouth too dry and ears overbearingly heated. Her dainty fingers tremble when they finally, if not instinctively, make a cupping motion and venture to cover her mouth.

Olivia Pope sobs, heaving breaths, eyes still miraculously barren of dampness.

She just can't _breathe._

Something catches her eye then- a minute, sluggish movement out of her peripheral. Huck is staring at her from his position on the couch, all of the abandoned-then-rescued puppy it feels like he is. He's watching a rerun of the speech she'd pieced together, a speech that would quickly define her life.

The sheer absurdity that is her situation becomes stark against reality.

An ex CIA hit man is currently residing in her living room, she has officially dumped the President of the United States, and everyone in the world think she has her case together.

She begins laughing- hysterical and sharp- and then all she can do is pad a few more steps forward, kick off her heels, and sink down onto the couch next to her old friend. His massive form shifts awkwardly, mouth pinched to the side.

He looks terribly worried, and she hates doing that to him. He already has enough to deal with. "Liv," he grumbles. She's still stuttering air. She can't help it.

Hollis had been devastatingly correct, and her cherry is all but fine dust in the wind. She thinks about the lives- seven perfect, human lives- and she thinks about Lindsey Dwyer, and she thinks about Cyrus with his zealous husband and his blithe. It strikes her then, that she is actually envious of a gay man.

That makes her laugh harder.

Huck leans forward on his elbows, studying her form. Eyes drift to the television, on pause, and suddenly her hysteria halts, air sucked out of her in a final cease of flurry. His face makes her heart disengage from her chest.

Suddenly, she's tired- dog tired, center of your bones turning to rubber exhausted.

Face pinched, a wayward tear finally streaks her feverish cheek.

He is the moon and she is the oceanic abyss, and no matter what he preaches about being under her control, she feels nothing more than tethered to that face, rooted to the absolute boundless curls on his head, the light in his eyes, the sureness of his sturdy palms, and the curve of his lips. Knowing that- giving that away because-

All she feels now is hollow, endless space in her stomach and head, empty and nothing all at the same time.

Olivia considers herself to be a strong woman, both intellectually and in poweress. The only exception is Fitzgerald Grant, because apparently he can reduce her to a heartbroken damsel who cries and laughs and goes insane because she might not ever see him again. Huck takes the hint and scoots over to pat her back softly, a timid to the upheaval of emotion. She doesn't blame him.

Eventually, all she can do is hiccup pathetically. She doesn't believe she's cried this hard since she was a child. It's quiet for a long time, until she dredges up the strength to reach a hand out to clasp over Huck's enormous one. "Thank you," she forces, weakly.

He folds his hand to wrap around hers and squeezes it reassuringly.

She is thankful it's so warm.

"If he hurt you bad, I can take care of him, Livy."

Her smile is wan. "That won't be necessary. _I _let _him _go."

Huck's eyebrows furrow in a way that reminds her of a cartoon. "I know what it's like to give something up. I can tell you that it gets better."

The jarring image of his heaps of hair and rotten smell still burns into her conscience. "I hope so," she manages to respond.

Not one bit of her believes him.

**O**

Edison once asks her "Do you think Sally Hemings was raped or did things with Jefferson on her own free will?"

The dinner topics are always amusing with Edison. Always.

At the time, she'd never heard the name Fitz Grant and sips her wine with a coquettish, playful smirk. She and Edison fit together like two end pieces of a puzzle- same cut, same style. Simplistic and doesn't require much thought. Her answer doesn't a lot much contemplation.

"I don't think even she knew."

"He was still her master," Edison adds.

She quirks an eyebrow and brushes back her hair.

"But we're all someone's property."

Later, she'll remember that conversation when she's slipping back into her neat suit that lay sloppily on the hotel floor- she'll remember, and she'll hate herself just a little.

**O**

The morning after was quiet, and later she'll understand that her silent and his silent are two entirely different things. She wakes a quarter to six, light streaming in hazily through one cracked curtain. It's going to be overcast she realizes as he spoons her and runs his baring hands over her midriff.

His breath is heavy against her neck, and she shivers because she can't help herself.

"I need to go back to my hotel room," she admits bleakly.

His touch stills. It makes her hold her tongue for a moment before,

"Do you regret this?"

The discomfort and unease in his tone is blatant. She can't lie to him. She just can't do it.

"No."

She hates how unsure _she _sounds, like a child asking her mother about death, or a teenager admitting love for the first time. First times are difficult. He is no exception.

"I don't either."

Her stomach flips, legitimately flips, and right then she knows in her gut, in the recesses of her mind, that what she and Fitz have will never be simple, no matter how easy it feels.

Because it does.

Standing with him in a barren hallway, back against his chest, eyes closed, minutes of nothing and everything at the same time- she feels home and belonging and that has to be something to hold onto. A career has always been a part of her five point plan. Fitzgerald Grant was not. When he threads his hands in her hair and delves deep into her mouth, molten passion and wet promises, he manages to make her forget. Mind deliciously blank, all that is left is to take and take and give nothing back- not to Mellie, to Cyrus, to the campaign.

And maybe that is her very first mistake.

**O**

Two weeks after she tosses her resignation onto the firm oak of his desk she walks in on Huck watching some months old documentary on Presidential assassination attempts. The thought tears through her like a freight train, and it's all she can do to slide down onto the couch and pull her knees up to her chest to make herself nonexistent- to make the pain consuming her cease.

Sooner or later, she can relax again.

_The mere thought of it is enough to give her chest pain._

Huck looks bored, and she focuses on that. She'd met with a document forger today because Lindsey Dwyer deserved a life, even if the one Olivia had was slowly going to hell.

"Huck," she begins. "I need a favor."

**O**

Amongst ruined bed sheets and giggling pecks on flesh, Fitz fed her chocolate covered cherries in bed. It was about half way to the White House, and the primary elections were passing in a dizzy flurry of choosing ties and dresses and wording. Everything was concise and eggshells when it was to be affronted- everything was thought about.

She'd picked up the box of sweet treats at a local store because she was feeling daring and she was craving them- only that.

Still, actions cannot convey how tantalizing and arousing it is when he bites into one and proceeds to drag the sticky syrup inside across delicate skin. A mess of nerves, she's writhing and keening deliriously. "_Don't stop."_

He'd proceeded to hitch a muscular leg over his shoulder and drag his tongue in a figure eight fashion. Her stomach clenched, and she tossed her head, arching .

"Fitz. Fu- There. Right there. Please. _Please."_

He plays her like a maestro, index finger twisting, thumb caressing, and his _tongue. _

That night makes the cut when she figures her most memorable evenings of her life.

Mellie arrives the next day, and spontaneously takes her through the city to shop. Mellie is a beautiful woman, and often Olivia believes that beneath the political animal there is a woman who is kind and vulnerable, and maybe doesn't know what she's getting herself into.

The Nordstrom's isn't too terribly busy, and the brunette wants to make a stop by the lingerie. "I thought I'd pick up something to surprise Fitz with. I haven't seen him in so long."

That following afternoon goes straight to the top of the worst instances that could ever possibly be.

**O**

Idly, she'll stay awake hours after she tried to go to sleep, thinking of her new firm and scandals and what might happen after Fitz's presidency ends.

She wonders if he'll come looking for her; if he'll still want her like she will always want him.

She thinks that Huck lies even when he doesn't mean to.

Some nights, she seeks a cure, a remedy of distant memories of different night and hotel rooms and secrets and whispers and passion.

Olivia soothes herself with his fingers, which are too much not like his to be becoming, but get the job done. She mouths his name against the pillow and prays she won't end up alone.

Seven years could be a long time.

**O**

The document forger had asked her what she'd needed them for. Fixing him with a cold stare that shut down any affirmations, the answer had been teetering on the tip of her proverbial tongue.

She's only verbose if she has to be.

With Fitz, words weren't enough.

But she wanted to say, so desperately-

"Everyone deserves to have a life."

The thing is:

She is not everyone.

**O**

Even though she's the one who leaves, all she can ever associate with Fitz is going, going, going, and sweet cherries. The city thrums with life; women pass her on the street with their little girls holding their hands and babies in strollers and couples holding hands like lifelines.

Her mother had a phase where she read palms, and the Pope household had become well versed in the numerous etchings in flesh. Nowadays, she recognizes Fitz- he greets her every morning when she washes her face- every time she uses the restroom to cleanse her hands.

He is the wayward strand that melds with her love line, and he is the moon, and he is every happy moment she has bared witness to on the street that is a miracle, a chance that is begging to be taken. Fitz is a life she could have, and he is the path not traveled.

Seeing him in the ghost of a little girl that could have been theirs, all dimpled cheeks and sparkling blue orbs and skin the color of creamed coffee- that is second nature.

But sometimes she doesn't go to sleep with his name on her lips- sometimes she bites the pillow so hard she tastes cotton and salt because the tears that leak from her eyes won't be ignored.

Sometimes.

(That is her reckoning.)

**O**

"Please," she begs, years later, a lifetime later, the scent of bleach and antiseptic too strong, the machines too loud as they tattoo a rhythm of life, his sturdy hand too cold.

"You can't leave me," she tells him, even though she doesn't think he can hear her.

"We're in this together, remember?"


End file.
